The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) eBook

The manner in which he dealt with the potato blight,
and consequent Irish Famine, is indefensible.
His policy from first to last was a policy of delay—­delay
in a case in which delay was ruin. He went on
by slow and almost imperceptible degrees preparing
his colleagues for his altered views on the Corn duties;
talking and writing all the time pathetically, about
the deep apprehensions he entertained of an impending
famine in Ireland, while his whole heart was set on
quite another object. To aid this masked policy
of his, there was Commission after Commission—­the
Scientific Commission, the Castle Commission, the
Police inquiry; and these went on analyzing, printing,
and distributing hundreds weight of query sheets,
and making reports, long after it was proved, beyond
all doubt, that half the food of the Irish people had
been irretrievably lost, the money value of which was
estimated at from eight to ten millions of pounds
sterling. So early as the end of October, 1845,
Dr. Playfair, his own scientific investigator, expressed
to him his opinion that fully one half of the potatoes
in Ireland were perfectly unfit for human food; he
said he had made a careful tour of the potato shops
of Dublin, and had found that those potatoes picked
as sound had nineteen bad for fourteen good!
Sir Robert Peel knew this in October, 1845; admitted
its truth more than once during the session of Parliament
that followed, and yet the bill which he persisted
in regarding as the only panacea for such a national
calamity, did not become law until the 25th of June,
1846, eight months afterwards; but of course four
millions of foodless Irish must battle with starvation
until the Premier had matured and carried his measure
for securing cheap bread for the artizans of England;
and further, those same famishing millions had, day
after day, to submit to be insulted by his false and
hollow assertion, that all this was done for them.
Nor can it be urged in his favour, that the delay
in repealing the Corn Laws was the fault of his opponents,
not his own; for no one knew better than he, a shrewd
experienced party leader, that every available weapon
of Parliamentary warfare would be used, as they were
used, against his bill for the repeal of the Corn
Laws, in order to strike it down by sheer defeat if
possible, but if not, at least to maim and lop it of
its best provisions.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Mr. Culhoun.

[89] During the debate in the House of Lords on the
Address, in January, 1846, Lord Brougham stated his
views about the repeal of the Corn Laws; the reasons
why they should be repealed, and the effects of that
repeal. These views must have seemed to many
at the time strange enough, if not eccentric, but
they have turned out to be singularly correct.
He said:—­“It was my opinion that
an alteration in the commercial policy of this country
with respect to corn, as well as to other commodities,
was highly expedient; I will not say solely, but principally,